


Hero's Homecoming

by servantofclio



Series: Sewers to Stars [9]
Category: Mass Effect, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles - All Media Types
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-25
Updated: 2014-07-25
Packaged: 2018-02-10 09:27:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,580
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2019864
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/servantofclio/pseuds/servantofclio
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After saving the Citadel from Sovereign, Shepard finds an excuse to go home.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hero's Homecoming

“Anderson, there’s real work to be done,” Shepard says, grimacing as a twinge passes through her injured shoulder. Ironically, broken bones are quicker to heal up with current treatments than soft-tissue damage, and she’s frustrated at how long it’s taking her torn muscles and ruptured ligaments to knit back together. “I don’t have time for all this publicity crap.”

 

“Uh-huh.” Anderson clearly isn’t missing her wince. “You have two dozen requests for interviews, Shepard. Earth and the colonies want to see the galaxy’s new hero, and it’s good for morale. Doing a little publicity won’t kill you.”

 

“You don’t know that,” Shepard counters, but the corner of her mouth turns up. “And I already did that interview with Emily Wong.”

 

“One interview is barely a drop in the bucket. People want to see you.”

 

She points to her stack of datapads. “I really do have a lot of work. I’ve been getting a ton of messages, and—”

 

“Half that paperwork could be done by Pressly,” says Anderson. “It’s part of his job. The Alliance can assign you someone to sort the messages. You want to get the word out about the Reapers, Shepard? You can do that more effectively with a couple of media appearances.”

 

Shepard sighs. He has a point.

 

“As long as you don’t scare people _too_ much,” he adds, an afterthought.

 

Shepard makes a face. “I don’t want to cause mass panic more than anyone else.”

 

“Good.” Anderson gives her a smile with a bit of an edge to it. “Consider it a favor to me, if you have to.”

 

She sighs and slumps back in her chair. “Low blow, Captain.”

 

“That’s Councilor.”

 

“Right.” Considering she’s the one who stuck him with the Councilor’s seat, and she knows he has his hands full dealing with the rest of the Council in the aftermath of Sovereign’s attack, she probably owes him one.

 

His expression softens. “I’ve looked at the requests myself. You’re being offered all-expenses-paid trips; some of these media organizations are willing to fly you anywhere. You could take a tour of the colonies or go back to Earth, on someone else’s credits. Take a few. With that shoulder injury, you’re going nowhere near combat for a couple weeks, and someone else can handle the paperwork. Consider it a vacation.”

 

“Meeting with the press is not much of a vacation,” Shepard points out, but part of her brain has seized on that notion: _back to Earth_. Could she? Really? Could she indulge herself, just a little? She shuffles the datapads around until she finds the one with all the interview requests. She’s been ignoring them so steadfastly that she hadn’t even looked at the details.

 

“Each interview will be an hour or two. You’d have free time,” Anderson says, as she scans her way down the list.

 

“Yeah,” she says absent-mindedly. Now that she’s actually looking at the list, certain details jump out at her. “You know, it looks like I could take up this offer for a trip to New York and do three or four interviews in the space of a week.”

 

Anderson chuckles. “Efficient, if not restful. Back to the old stomping grounds, eh?”

 

Shepard doesn’t even try to fight back the smile that’s breaking over her face. “Yeah. Exactly.”

 

Earth’s finest news organizations fall over themselves to schedule interviews and split the costs of putting her up at a fancy hotel for a week. Once the schedule is set up, she sends an encrypted message with her itinerary attached.

 

Her hotel room isn’t just a room, it’s a suite. It has to be one of the fanciest spaces she’s been in her life, behind the Council Chambers but not much else. Everything is restrained shades of aqua and silver, when it isn’t authentic Earth-grown hardwood. She sinks into the pile of the carpet almost up to her ankles. The bed is big enough for four people to sleep in. The bathroom has acres of mirror, marble countertops, and a “tub” that she could fit her entire combat team in, Wrex included. It has a private elevator and it’s on the twelfth floor of the hotel, which obviously is no obstacle, because Shepard comes back from a late-afternoon interview and finds a quartet of ninja already there.

 

“This is swanky, Shepard!” Mikey calls as soon as she flicks the light on.

 

She grins out of sheer infectious delight. “I know! Did you check everything out?” She glances around, but nothing appears particularly disarranged.

 

“That’s exactly what I’ve been trying to prevent,” Leo says through his teeth, “and we only got here five minutes ago.”

 

Shepard throws her right arm out expansively, the left still in its sling. “Well, be my guest. There’s a minibar, there’s a giant ridiculous bathroom—”

 

“Can I bounce on the bed?” Mikey demands.

 

“Sure, what the hell,” Shepard says, over Leo’s long-suffering sigh. “I’d rather not trash the place, but other than that, anything goes. I’m not even paying my own credits.”

 

“Well, in that case...” Raph saunters toward the minibar.

 

“First things first,” Leo says, extending his arms, and Shepard’s more than willing to take the hug. Even though they’re all careful with her, her injured shoulder’s screaming by the time they’re done, but she’s beyond caring. She half wants to join Mikey as he hurls himself onto the bed and tests the springs, but she’s distracted by Donnie’s examination of the entertainment system.

 

A couple minutes later the hotel’s communication line rings and everyone freezes into silence, even Mikey, who hits the mattress with an unavoidable _whumph_ before Shepard picks up. “Hello?”

 

“Commander Shepard? I’m sorry to disturb, but there are some people here who say they have an interview scheduled with you...”

 

The turtles all nod vigorously at her, so she says, “Oh, right. That interview. Yeah, send them up.”

 

“April said she didn’t feel like climbing the building,” Donnie puts in once she’d disconnected.

 

“Wuss,” Raph grunts, pouring himself a glass of something.

 

“She’s just practicing other skills,” Leo says. “There’s more than one way to get where you’re not supposed to be.”

 

Sure enough, it’s April and Casey, done up plausibly enough as journalists. More hugs, and then Shepard insists they order room service, because again, _why the hell not_. She wonders if anyone will comment on the fact that she and the two supposed interviewers are ordering enough food for a dozen people. Shepard flops into a chair and watches Mikey perform acrobatics on the bed while April exclaims over the suite and Casey joins Raph at the bar.

 

“There are a lot of weird stories floating around about the final battle,” Leo says. “What actually happened?”

 

“Is it true that Spectre asshole offed himself?” Casey asks.

 

“Did you learn anything from examining the geth, or their ship?” Donnie asks. “It’s an unprecedented opportunity to examine a distributed artificial intelligence—hey!” as April nudges him with an elbow and Raph rolls his eyes.

 

Shepard grins. “I know a quarian AI expert you’d love to talk to.”

 

Donnie brightens immediately. “Yeah, I would, you can pass on my contact info—”

 

“Come on, Donnie,” says Leo. “One thing at a time.”

 

For a moment Shepard is trying to decide whether the prospect of Donnie and Tali collaborating is more exhilarating or appalling, but then she straightens up, conscious of the six sets of eyes on her, and especially conscious of Leo’s. There’s something about being here, back in New York, sprawled in a chair like a teenager, that washes the years away. Before she was a Spectre, before she was an officer, hell, before she was anything at all, she answered to Leonardo. “It wasn’t the geth,” she says. “Or not just the geth. They were agents for... something else. The Protheans called them Reapers. And yeah, Saren killed himself, but he wasn’t calling the shots, either. He’d been...” She shakes her head, remembering Saren’s end. “Most of what he did, he did as a Reaper’s puppet.” Literally, in the end, the cybernetics lacing his body animated in a grisly final strike.

 

She tells the story in as orderly a fashion as she can. The fate of the Protheans, the fact that the Citadel is a trap, the nature of indoctrination. She’s rewarded with a degree of focus that’s almost frightening in its intensity. She even manages to keep Mikey’s attention for most of it. “The Reapers are coming,” she finishes. “We don’t know when, we don’t know how many. Enough to destroy the Protheans, but—” She raises her good shoulder and spreads her hands. “We deflected their first strike. Prevented them from getting an easy victory. But they’re still coming, and we’re going to need to be ready.”

 

“Sounds like a job for the government,” Casey says.

 

Shepard nods. “It is, absolutely. The Council’s moving pretty slowly on this right now. The Citadel’s a mess, people are already scared. They keep talking about mass panic.”

 

“With good reason,” Leo says slowly. “Still...”

 

“Yeah,” Shepard says.

 

“This explains some of the anomalous results researchers have been getting regarding the age of the mass relays,” Donnie mutters, looking thoughtful.

 

Next to him, April leans forward. “But what about this indoctrination thing? How does it work? Is there any way to reverse it?”

 

April’s the one with training in psychology and neuroscience. Shepard spreads her hands. “I was told it was irreversible. I don’t know. I don’t think there have been a lot of subjects to examine. I saw a couple of asari come back from it, but one just briefly, and the other only after she was eaten by a giant plant monster.”

 

“Giant plant monster?” say Mikey, Raph, and Donnie simultaneously. Mikey adds, “Eeewwwwww,” with a sort of appreciative revulsion.

 

“You didn’t say anything about the giant plant monster,” Donnie complains.

 

“Right, I left that part out. I don’t know... it was a giant, ancient, mind-controlling plant monster, and I had to kill it.” Shepard frowns. “I hope I killed it, anyway.” She ignores how Donnie and April both look disappointed at that, and pulls an OSD of her pocket. “This is everything I know about everything on the mission.” She tosses it to Donnie, who snags it out of the air in a movement almost too fast to see. “All of that is very very classified, by the way, but I don’t care. If you can figure anything out about how to reverse indoctrination or how to stop Reapers, or anything at all, let me know.”

 

She can tell by the look in his eyes that he’s itching to access the stored data _right now_.

 

“What else do you need from us?” Leo asks.

 

A glance around the room tells her that she’s got them, everyone’s eyes focused and resolved, and that gives her a rush that she can’t explain. She blows out a breath, buoyed up by that wall of confidence. “I don’t know. It’s... not much of a ninja thing, really, so there may not be much. This— this is big, and it needs top-level attention from everybody. But... I wanted you to know the truth.”

 

Leo gives her a nod. “Well, if you do need us, you know where to find us.”

 

She laughs at herself a little, even though it makes her feel better than she can say to know that. If she could only go out and convince the galaxy about the Reapers one person at a time... “Thank you,” she says softly, and clears her throat. “Wow, that was heavy. Let me get something.” It takes a bit of effort to push herself out of the armchair’s soft, cushiony embrace, but she does it, crossing to the closet where she stashed a number of packages. She can’t quite manage the bag one-armed; Mikey bounces himself off the bed and joins her, eyes widening when he sees the bright paper. “I know it’s not quite Christmas,” Shepard says, feeling awkward, “but I wasn’t sure when I’d be on Earth again, and... well. Here you go?”

 

“You didn’t have to,” Leo protests, although Mikey and Raph and Casey are already ripping into theirs.

 

Shepard shrugs with just her good shoulder. “I have a few years to make up for.”

 

She’d mostly gone for galactic stuff that wasn’t always easy to get on Earth, or was only available with a massive mark-up and tariffs. “Those are the long-lasting asari kind,” she explains to April, looking at her box of cosmetics. “Asari companies guard the formulas for that stuff jealously.” Perfect for April, who’s worn eyeliner into fights for as long as Shepard’s known her.

 

“Really?” Donnie’s attention is pulled from his own set of omni-tool mods. “What do they put in it? I could take a sample—”

 

April slaps his hand away. “Mine, Donnie. These are mine.”

 

“Those,” Shepard tells him, “are mostly mods recommended or designed by my quarian friend. She can do things with an omni-tool I haven’t seen anyone else manage.”

 

He brightens, firing up his own ‘tool. “Thanks, Shepard!”

 

She turns to find Raph at her elbow, close enough to say into her ear, “If you tell anyone you got me this, I am going to—”

 

“Hurt me?” she says with a smirk. She was expecting this reaction. “Don’t worry. I’ll say I just gave you Blasto movies and turian war vids.” Which she did, going on Garrus’ recommendations, but she also got him the special extended cut of _Fleet and Flotilla_ , just out now and hard to get on Earth.

 

Raph snorts. “You’d better.” He moves off, with a last threatening glare, when Casey calls him over to take a look at the stack of comics she got him, all about the solitary villain-fighting adventures of an asari justicar. Leo slips up as he leaves.

 

“This is too—”

 

“Don’t worry about it,” she interrupts, eyeing the asari knife in his hand. Its real name is a long asari word she forgot as soon as she left the shop, and it looks small in his hand, but it’s a graceful, elegant blade, and the metal winks blue with the faint shine of trace amounts of eezo. “It’s not an antique or anything, and I knew you’d appreciate it.”

 

“Thank you,” he says, testing the weight of it. “I’m not sure any of us are going to thank you for Mikey’s, though.”

 

She grins. The youngest turtle, in spite of being over thirty, is bouncing around trying to get the others to sniff some of the assortment of weird alien foodstuffs she gave him. “I made sure they were all levo-amino, at least.”

 

“Thanks for that, then.”

 

“Any time,” she says, and sinks back into her chair. It’s all war stories and catching up now, she tells them about her ship and her team, and hears all about April’s new job and what they’ve been up to since she was last in New York, a couple of years ago. Somehow they manage to finish up all the food and order another round of snacks from room service, at nearly midnight.

 

Shepard knows that she has to put on a bright face for another round of interviews in the morning, and she knows she’ll have to pack up in the afternoon to catch an evening shuttle off-planet. After that, she hopes, she gets her new assignment, and takes the next steps in the war they’re already fighting. For now, she can let herself relax in the familiar whirl of chaos.


End file.
